New 'Quantum Break' Trailer Shows the Half That's Actually a TV Show

The upcoming shooter Quantum Break has a nifty gimmick, created back when it was first announced alongside Microsoft’s Xbox One: it was intended to bridge original TV show programming and video games on Microsoft’s platform.

Microsoft has all but abandoned the idea of creating TV shows since then, but Quantum Break still includes a lot of those ideas. The game has some serious acting talent in The Following’s Shawn Ashmore, Game of Thrones’ Aiden Gillen, The Wire’s Lance Reddick and Allegiant’s Courtney Hope. And it has actual, fully realized TV episodes interspersed with in-game action—four of them, to be precise.

Those episodes appear in between each of the game’s “episodes,” of which there are five, and they expand Quantum Break’s story of Ashmore as protagonist Jack Joyce trying to fight/stop/kill Gillen as bad guy Paul Serene, using time-controlling superpowers.

The whole “TV show and video game smashed together” concept has been interesting since the Xbox One was first announced, even if it didn’t really pan out, kind of like the now-defunct Syfy show Defiance, which hit TV alongside a video game that let players participate in its world. The trailer above gives another taste of Quantum Break’s live-action side. It might be a gimmick that doesn’t amount to much, but the idea of video games and TV shows living side by side could be a really cool one. Provided, that is, a games company like Microsoft actually comes along with a good idea of how to do it. Still waiting on that part—fingers crossed that Quantum Break can deliver.